Many fans consider the classic era to be Star Fox's peak, but the years since then have been more of a mixed bag.

After Star Fox Adventures, Star Fox: Assault (the fourth game in the franchise), brought the series back to its space combat roots. It was released for the Nintendo Gamecube in 2005 (February of that year in North America and Japan).

The working title was "Star Fox Armada", but the subtitle was eventually changed to Assault. The game was developed by Nintendo and Namco, famed developers of Pac-Man, Tekken, Galaxian, and Ace Combat. Many of the same Namco developers who worked on Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies helped make this game.

The directors for Assault were Toshiyuki Nakanishi, Hideki Okazaki, and Yutaka Yoshida. As far as producers go, they were Tsuyoshi Kobayashi, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Takaya Imamura, who was a graphic designer on Star Fox and the art director on Star Fox 64.

While the game was being developed a Star Fox arcade game was rumored, but nothing ever materialized from this.

After Adventure's shift in gameplay, Assault brought Star Fox back to being a space shooter. However, there were still on foot missions in addition to using the Arwing and Landmaster tank.

Assault was linear in terms of mission choices; the branching paths of earlier games such as Star Fox for the SNES and Star Fox 64 were gone.

Concerning the levels themselves, some were on rails and some allowed full freedom of movement. Furthermore, the player could even hop in and out of the Arwing at certain points.